


Until My Heart's Unmaking

by GodmotherToClarion



Category: Free!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Royalty, Flower: peppermint!!, Fluff, Friendship, Hopeful Ending, M/M, MakoHaru Flower Exchange, Marriage Proposal, Prince Nanase Haruka, Protective Tachibana Makoto, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-28 05:31:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18750001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GodmotherToClarion/pseuds/GodmotherToClarion
Summary: "I accept my fate as I accepted my crown, Father. A prince must never falter in his duty, even if it costs him his life. Your duty is to govern our people, to remain steadfast in their defense through peace and war and famine, and this...this was mine."Prince Haruka of the Southern Isles has been confined to his bed for a year, cursed with a lingering death for breaking the laws of magic."Don't you dare say a word, aynee! They've doomed you for daring to end the drought, for keeping us all from starvation―I won't sit by and watch this kill you, I won't!"His closest friend and comrade-in-arms refuses to let him go.





	Until My Heart's Unmaking

**Author's Note:**

> For [paigyloli](https://paigyloli.tumblr.com/) on tumblr!
> 
> Flower: peppermint!
> 
> According to the Symbolism Wiki: "Mint is a symbol of protection from illness...[and] can also symbolize fidelity, virtue, and precious moments."
> 
> This fic was partially inspired by [this](https://online-clutter.tumblr.com/post/104467584054/juztanotherotpblog-%E9%BA%BA%E6%A5%BD-mennraku) amazing art! Check it out!

“Let me pass, _please._ ”

“Haru is not to be disturbed,” said the young man standing in the doorway, looking up at Makoto in a mixture of exasperation and pity. “Master Tachibana, he must _rest_ if he is to get well _―_ ”

“Please,” begged Makoto, brandishing a bundle of sweet-smelling mint at him. “Please, Rei. I need to see him. Just once, before I go.”

“Go?” asked Rei, frowning. “Where are you going?”

“I―somewhere. Just, please―”

“Rei,” came a soft voice from somewhere over the manservant’s shoulder, followed by a hacking cough that sent an ache through Makoto’s own chest. “Rei, it’s all right. Let him in.”

“But Haru, you…”

“Have the strength for him, always.” The voice paused. “Makoto, _aynee_ , come in.”

Rei stepped aside and waved Makoto past, letting himself out into the corridor before shutting the door behind him. Makoto was left alone just beyond the threshold, clutching his bundle of mint in worry as he saw his liege’s face―white and waxy where his cheeks were once pinker than fresh-cut blushroses, and thin as if he had not eaten for days.

For all Makoto knew, he hadn’t.

“Haru,” he breathed, stumbling the last few steps to the bed and sitting at the prince’s feet. “I―I’m here.”

“So you are,” hummed his friend, breathing the ghost of a laugh as he reached for Makoto’s hands. His eyes were still the same, Makoto thought: long-lashed and blue and clear like the sea at sunrise, blissfully tranquil and as much a source of comfort as they had been in Makoto’s childhood long ago. “With peppermint, too.”

“Oh!” he said, laying the sprigs of mint at Haru’s knee. “These were the best I found this morning, so I cut them for you to make the air fresher.”

“You remembered that I can’t have the windows open,” Haru smiled, taking the rain-damp leaves and pressing them to his nose. “So you brought the spring to me.”

“I wanted to see you so badly,” Makoto confessed, grasping Haru’s hands and kissing them. “When they called the physician, I thought you might―”

“Not yet,” his friend interrupted, bringing Makoto’s fingers up to his own white lips. “Not for a while to come, if the healers know anything at all. And there are worse things than death besides, sweetheart. I’ve seen them.”

He closed his eyes.

“So have you.”

Makoto thought back to the past year, the year that came and went without a drop of water from the skies, the year Haru broke the most sacred law of sorcery to keep the crops from dying and received a death-curse in exchange. The year Makoto resolved to lift it, only to be foiled again, and again, and again.

It had been nearly ten months since then, he mused. Ten months of Haru growing paler day by day, of his limbs losing the power to heft his broadsword and then to walk unaided, ten months of the wheat and barley and corn growing tall and full in the fields, ten months that had passed without worry for the kingdom or much thought to its prince’s recovery.

Watching it happen―watching the strength leave Haru’s heart and body―that had been a death of its own kind, he realized.

“You, certainly,” Haru observed, breaking him out of his trance. “And I am sorry for it.”

“Sorry?” gasped Makoto. “What could you possibly have to be sorry for?”

“For keeping you near, when I’ll soon be so far away,” murmured the prince. “It’s been cruel of me.”

“I would have stayed even if you commanded me to leave your side,” he admitted. “You would have done the same.”

“But you’re leaving soon, aren’t you?” asked Haru. “I heard you, earlier. Where are you going?”

Makoto bit his lip and reached out again for Haru’s palms, pressing them flat to his heart.

“To the North Wilds, if I can make it that far. To find a healer for you.”

“What?” Haru sprang upright, tearing his arms away and knocking the bunch of peppermint to the floor. “No, that’s where I went to get the rain spell, and they―they’re the ones that did this to me the second I ended the drought, they’ll _kill_ you―”

“I’m still going to try.”

“I’ll throw you in the _gaols_ if you do,” hissed Haru, turning three shades whiter. “Don’t you _dare,_ Makoto―”

“Then I’ll die in the gaols, instead of out in the Wilds,” Makoto cried. "But I'll die either way, and you know I speak truly! I’ve followed you everywhere, into wars and out of them, into places so dark and wretched that you had to carry me back because I was hurt too badly to walk alone―what makes you think I won’t follow you into your grave?”

“You _will_ let me die at peace,” said Haru, suddenly becoming every inch the lord he was and speaking as a prince to a subject and not as a friend to a friend, and certainly not (though this last had never been right for them, even when they were children) as a boy to his brother. “I won’t lie here drowning in terror for you while choking to death on my blood, I forbid it―”

“You’re not going to die at all,” vowed Makoto, meeting him eye to eye. “I won’t let it happen.”

“There’s nothing you can do.” Haru was weeping now, pleading with him, clutching at his tunic with shaking fingers like a child coming out of a nightmare. “I’m afraid to go without you beside me at the end, can’t you see? You think Father hasn’t tried everything? He has, and you _know_ it, so―”

He moved almost without meaning to, and when he next lifted his eyelashes he found his mouth pressed to the heart of Haru’s palm and Haru himself sitting two feet away, staring so hard that his eyes nearly fell out of his head.

“This hand,” he whispered, tracing its fate and marriage lines and wondering what a world without them would be―if the sun would remember to set in the evenings, if the moon would still stir the tides, if the crops would wither and die in mourning for the soul that had given them life. “I’ve always been holding it, always. What would I be without you? You’re as much of me as I am, and I’d rather die fighting to keep you than fade away grieving, after.”

“I know,” choked Haru. “I know, but for my sake, please―”

The prince turned away and coughed into a linen cloth (as he did more and more often, now that the year-anniversary of his curse was only two months away) before rolling it into a ball and stashing it under his pillow―but not quickly enough, for Makoto had seen the bright stain that bloomed between his thumbs like poppies’ petals, and as usual the proof of Haru’s suffering left him so deeply wounded that speech would not come to his lips.

“I’m sorry,” Haru told him again. “Forgive me, _aynee_. Forgive me.”

“I can forgive you for stopping my heart, Haru-chan,” he said, kissing Haru’s feet through the blankets. “But never for stopping me from preserving yours.”

“Those are the same things, aren’t they?” murmured his friend. “There was never a knight without his prince, or a sunbeam without his shadow. Not for us, at least.”

“No, not for us,” croaked Makoto. “Never.”

And then, because Haru’s eyes were still full of tears, he swallowed his worry and spoke again.

“Will you think about something for me, while I’m gone?”

“Anything, if you promise to come back.”

“Do you think you would like to be married, when you’re better?” Makoto asked him. “With crowns of mint for your hair, and a proper wedding-feast by the summer house. And then a month at the seaside, before coming back to the castle.”

“It sounds very nice,” sighed the prince. “Who would I be marrying? You’ve forgotten to mention that.”

“Whomever you like, _aynee._ No one could turn your love away, having known it.”

Haru parted his lips to argue, and Makoto brushed them once with his own before laughing and pulling away.

“What say you, my lord?”

“That a certain soldier would stay home, if he wants to make me happy. But that if he goes he must take a good companion with him, and whatever food he can carry and coin enough from the coffers. And medicine from the healing halls, just in case, and―”

“He’ll do all you ask of him, dearheart.” Makoto kissed him again, smiling as Haru pressed forward and sighed before closing his eyes. “Does he have your leave to go?”

“He does,” whispered Haru. “But you will come home?”

“I will come home, and you will heal. Promise?”

“I promise.”

“Then there’s nothing keeping me now,” he said, setting the injured peppermint in the vase by Haru’s bed. “I’m taking Strawberry, if you don’t mind.”

“Please, she needs the exercise.” Haru slumped back against the pillows and groaned, already half-asleep as Makoto kissed him for the third time and rose to depart. “Keep safe, my love.”

“And you, Haru-chan.”

“Twenty-five years,” murmured the prince, clutching a sprig of mint to his heart as Makoto slipped out and disappeared down the corridor. “Twenty-five years, and he still remembers the _chan_.”


End file.
